It swept in like a summer thunderstorm — fast, ferocious and relentless — knocking me on my back. Some 24-hour bug — I swear it wasn’t swine flu — that has been going around. Left me feeling achy, nauseous, grumpy and with a pounding head like a woodpecker was trying to make a home in there. And then it was gone, as suddenly as it arrived. Strange. But it had sure taken its toll. I normally weather things pretty well. I don’t like to slow down, no matter what the circumstances. My leg fell off? Hmmm. Well, I’ll worry about that later. I was sick enough that I didn’t go into work the next day. It felt like a mean hangover. Like one of those evenings when you say to yourself, “maybe tequila shooters wouldn’t be such a bad idea.” As I went about my “sick day,” tired and bored, longing to go do something … anything … I wondered why there was always such an appeal to being sick as a kid.

Eco-car: Why are you so weird? A battery in the boot? A push button to start ya? That ain’t the way I was reared. It’s a song — an opening line to one I’ve been writing. It came to me as I was driving about in a Toyota Prius, one of those so-called hybrids that are revolutionizing the automotive world. I rented one while in Missouri last week to defend my thesis. I had imagined a thesis defense would be like standing atop a castle gate during a barbarian siege. It was nowhere near so dramatic. I hadn’t meant to rent a Prius — it was assigned to me when I showed up at the rental car counter at the airport. It had some kind of super-electric regenerating blah-blah-blah steam-driven, weed-eating, carbonated soda pop engine that ran both on gas and the energy it stored in the batteries out back.

Dear mom, It pains me to say this, but I felt something had to be done. I have to get this off my chest. I just can’t go on anymore holding this inside — bottling it up and trying to keep the cork from bursting out. Remember, I think you’ve been an amazing parent and never did anything to hurt me (although, giving me those hot toddies when I was a kid to help my bronchitis was definitely questionable.) So let me get this out: You cannot call me on the phone anymore to ask for help working out issues with your computer. You just can’t. I know it’s complicated stuff to grasp. But it’s killing me. It’s growing a field of gray hair in uneven patches atop my head. It’s making tense muscles in my neck snap under the strain. I blew a blood vessel in my eye the other night. I might have to seek counseling. In short: I just can’t do it anymore.

“I see you up there,”I shouted. “Don’t think I don’t see you.” I was staring up at the ceiling. In the middle of the night. Pointing. POINTING! I must have looked like a madman. Luckily everyone else in the house had gone to sleep. Not even the dog was up to worry about me … my sanity. The dog would have had me hauled off to the loony farm. She can dial a phone. But I wasn’t crazy. I saw it. A glimmer. A peak. A little spot. A tiny trickle. A drip. Yes, a drip. The leak was back. It had been so long since I had seen it. All winter. All summer. Back to last spring, and maybe earlier. In some ways it was like seeing an old friend — reassuring and comforting — until you remember the last time you saw this particular individual he drank all your beer, insulted your wife, turned your house upside down and ultimately relieved himself on your living room floor.

Sometimes I have trouble believing that the world around me is real. Sometimes I think that it all just has to be a figment of my imagination — maybe I’m slumbering and whatever I ate for dinner is making me dream strange things. How else to explain those stories you sometimes read that make your jaw drop open and your eyes pop clean out of your sockets. Like this story from Reuters that was, no kidding, headlined: “Japanese astronaut tests stink-free underwear.” I nearly fell out of my chair. The lead started out: “Teen-age boys, are you tired of embarrassing questions about when you last changed underwear? Japan’s space scientists may have just the answer — a line of odour-free underwear and casual clothing.”

Quick geography lesson: The United States is a really big place and not all of it has the same weather. For instance, if you leave Florida where it’s a balmy 80-plus degrees in March and set out for New York City, you’ll likely find that flip-flops and T-shirts won’t cut it. Unless, of course, your idea of Manhattan is hypothermia and a frostbitten toe falling off. Here in Florida spring is in full effect. It’s warm out, the leaves are an eye-tingling shade of green and there’s so much pollen on the ground that you have to shovel the driveway just to get your car out in the morning. New York is in no such disposition yet. The trees are still barren and temps are straining just to reach 50 degrees during the day, and dipping into the low 30s at night.

It’s been the absolute doldrums in the news recently. You can’t pick up the paper or switch on the TV without thinking to yourself, “Is there such a thing as a fourth world country? I bet my dollar could go a long way there.” Gloom and doom. Utterly depressing. All the talk of layoffs, bailouts, busts, bankruptcies, foreclosures, ponzi schemes and that poor jilted contestant on “The Bachelor.” Heartbreaking. So I want to help everyone take a collective deep breath by giving you some positive and upbeat news to read. I thought I would search out all the warm, fuzzy, feel-good, happy news I could find and relay it on to you. Call it a balm for the soul.

It was an official closing of a chapter. Slamming shut of the book. The recovery is now complete, the past is all behind me and the goal I set for myself a year ago has been achieved. “You know the surgeon who stitched you up said you might not run again,” my wife reminded me after I finished the Gasparilla 15K down in Tampa last weekend. It was almost a year after the fateful surfboard injury when a fin from my board stabbed me in the thigh leaving me with nerve damage — a prickly, pins and needles sensation up and down my leg — and a thigh that looks even scrawnier than before.

It was an odd sound — a strange one. One I had not heard on a run in quite a while. The sound? Silence. Or should I say natural noise. Sounds of the world going round and not drowned out by the tunes from my trusty iPod. I’m not an iPod addict like some people, but it has become a running staple for me the last couple of years — as common as running shoes or my frequent cursing as I try to loosen up during the first mile. Only, one of the speakers has started kicking out sounds like a chain saw revving in my ear. Thompson sweat can penetrate a hermetically-sealed chamber, and I think mine fried the earbud. I’ve been borrowing my wife’s, but I’m starting to feel guilty seeing as how I’m sweatier, dirtier and smellier. Why is it women could roll in garbage, live with pigs, swear off bathing for weeks and still beat us men even after we’ve showered.

When I turned 35 a year ago, it didn’t much matter to me. It was a benign age with an inconsequential number. Kind of bland and flat. Neither here nor there. He’s not young, and he’s not old. He’s in between — YOLD! That’s it, I was yold. But as I stare from the precipice at the coming of 36, I’m not so lackadaisical or flippant. Last year I wondered in a column whether turning bland and boring 35 meant I would start drinking mocha lattes, playing golf and shopping for affordable mid-size sedans. Turns out I can’t afford lattes, golf, or sedans, so that pretty much saved me from the oblivion I worried about. In that sense, it was a pretty good year. I also wrote in that column that the number 35 was not exciting in any conceivable way and totally forgettable. I called it the equivalent of cheap wallpaper, flat Coke or overcooked peas. But 36 is different. It’s not so soft on the ears. Instead it sounds heavy and stark. Six rhymes with bricks — or moldy sticks — and you can’t say it without a hard landing on that “ix” like you’re spitting on the ground.